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Subject: Re: Chess enthusiasts eye for aesthetics?

Author: Pete Galati

Date: 11:11:00 12/23/99

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On December 23, 1999 at 07:15:18, Frank Quisinsky wrote:

>Hello,
>
>all 37 engines (at the moment free, see my overview) runs fine under WinBoard.
>Tim Mann made a fantastic work.
>
>Grafik is toy, chess is important.
>
>But I can understand that professionel GUIs are popular. The options in this GUI
>are good for learning and ... . I read last year in a big german computer
>newspaper that the most people click in the graphical interfaces but work not
>with the programs. When a good GUI have 100 options then the people use 10% from
>this options, this is the reality. I use 5-10% from the Chess-Base 7 options.
>
>OK, I work the most time with Chess-Base 7.0 (my favorite GUI), here it is
>simply to work with databases and I can with many programs make analyzes.
>Engine-Engine with WinBoard Engines I play under WinBoard, here the matches runs
>with 100% power and without mistakes.
>
>Furthermore is important that the engines are WinBoard compatible. I think that
>in the next year a lot of professionel GUIs use this "WinBoard Engines". So I
>hope that the programmer which programmed a GUI (and WB Engines runs) make here
>his programs compatible to WinBoard.
>
>I think, when the programmer use WinBoard for a commercial success then the
>programmer can give a WinBoard engine for other GUIs ! Furthermore the people
>buy more programs when of the CD is a WinBoard engine (good example is Nimzo
>2000). People which have an other opinion are blind in my eyes or will not go
>with the time.
>
>And so WinBoard is the number 1 (for the programmer, I say this 37 engines and I
>think 20 engines which are not free, commercial or privateware).
>
>And the vather of this concept is Tim Mann.
>
>A good example are the nalimov table bases. The amateurs are the first and the
>professionels are the second members (OK Marthy Hirsch made his program early
>compatible to the Nalimov endgame databases). An fantastic programmer ... Marty
>Hirsch ... I hope that in the next year find a MChess WinBoard engine on my
>harddisk. Marty must not programmed a new GUI, important is a WinBoard engine
>and I think many people buy this WinBoard engine from Marty.
>
>Kind regards
>Frank
>
>PS
>And WinBoard ... ?
>The amateurs are the first and the professionel are the ...
>This is not new for me !

From your viewpoint, you say that the timeline always seems to be that the
amateur Chess programmers get to the inovations first, and the comercial
programs lag behind, and it takes them a while to addopt the new concepts.

That can be very clearly pointed out in the cases of the Namilov tablebases (and
last time I looked, Shredder was still useing the old style, might still be),
and also the whole Winboard concept, and unless Chessbase has improved their
Winboard engine abilities with Fritz 6, they're still lagging behind.

I'm rather curious as to how the commercial software companies are actually
turning out programs that are more powerfull than the really well developed
amateur programs, even though I think they're only marginaly stronger.  I always
wonder, does the extra time they can devote to their programs make the
difference, and if that's the case, why can't they show a much larger difference
in strength?  Is everyone, both amateur and commercial Chess programmer standing
in front of the same barrier in technology but the commercial software companies
can stand closer to that wall because of the extra time they can devote to the
programs?

Or, if this wall exists that keeps the margin of strength so close, do the
commercial Chess software companies have some inside secret that makes them more
powerful than the strongest Winboard engine?  But this doesn't make sense to me
if this is the case, because there's a several different companies out there
that have relatively powerfull programs, so would there be several different
inside secrets, or do they all share basically the same inside secret?  But I
just can't buy the inside secret concepts because how long can you really hold a
secret given just general company employee turnover.

Pete



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